The Word of God says, “In nothing be anxious.” Not because there is nothing to be anxious about. There is. There is that which required the bloody sweat of the Son of God in Gethsemane. But the Word of God tells us that full provision has been made for those wrong things that may well cause anxiety. Back of the word of the Spirit in Philippians, “In nothing be anxious,” is God. Back of the Christian Science word is “mortal mind.”
Christian Science says, “Reckon yourselves dead unto sin: because sin has no real existence, and since it is a creation of the wrong thinking of mortal mind, the way to think it out of existence is to reckon yourself dead to it. As you reckon, as you believe, you are dead to sin, and for you it has no reality or existence.”
Faith Does Not Create Facts
The Word of God says, “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin.” Not because sin does not exist. It does. Not because sin is not real. There is nothing more real in the universe. But Jesus Christ has met the full measure of the guilt and penalty and pollution of sin, and has completely conquered it. If we are crucified with him, buried with him and risen again with him, as every child of God is, then we are to reckon it true that we are dead unto sin: not because our thinking can change facts, but because God himself tells us to count on a great fact, something that he himself has accomplished; as we reckon that fact true our faith is laying hold of the benefits in present experience of that redemption which God has accomplished. My faith does not make the fact true. Faith gives me the benefit of a fact that is true whether I believe it or not. True faith is impossible without something real to rest upon. Satan’s counterfeit faith in Christian Science returns upon itself, endeavors to create facts by thinking them true.
Christian Science says that sickness and death are delusions of the mortal mind. It does not offer a scheme of healing disease but a philosophy to make clear that disease does not exist except as an error in the thinking of mortal mind. Clear away that error in thinking, and the effects of the so-called sickness will disappear.
The Word of God says, “The wages of sin is death”; and, “Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” Without entering here into the question of the use of remedies, or the limitations to the use of “the prayer of faith” which will heal the sick, let us remember that in Christ there is full provision for sin and all its results. He came to destroy the works of the devil. It is certainly God’s highest and first will that his children should be in health of body, not in sickness, if this result can be had without injuring his children in other ways. God’s permission of sickness and premature death among his devoted children must not be pointed to as an indication that it is not his first will that all his children should enjoy health of body. God would have all men to be saved, and has made full provision for their salvation: but not all are saved; God would have all his children abide continually in Christ and be kept from sinning, and he has made complete provision for this: but few are entering into their full privileges of victory; God would have his children free from disease, for he is the God who forgives all our iniquities and heals all our diseases, and in Christ he has made full and complete provision for this: but in his infinite love and wisdom he permits many of his children to continue in suffering of body for longer or shorter periods.
Christian Science Kills Faith
In this contrast between Christian Science and the Word of God it will be seen that the teachings of this “faith” cult make faith impossible. Satan always strikes at the center of things in his attacks on Christians and on the Word of God; so he takes away their faith and that which it rests upon. Again and again in personal interviews with those seeking victory, when the meaning of faith has been explained the answer has come, “Why, that would be just like Christian Science. I cannot make a thing true just by believing it.” With Christian Science, thinking a thing true makes it true, or rather, “thinking right” removes the error which has resulted only because the thinking has been wrong. But real faith rests always on facts. We believe, not in order to make a fact true, but because it is true.
So startling is the parallel between what Christian Science offers and what the Victorious Life in Christ guarantees, that a number who have read articles in The Sunday School Times have written to ask if the Victorious Life teaching and Christian Science were not practically the same. In answer to these inquiries a brief Open Letter was published a few years ago pointing out the difference between Christian Science and “the Victorious Life.” The Open Letter closed with this sentence: “They differ from each other as do food and poison, noon-day and midnight, omnipotence and impotence, life and death, Heaven and hell, Christ and Satan.”